Soapathy

When I get really busy or really tired, the first thing that I forgo is regular showers. It's not something I'm proud of but it's just how it is with me. As it stands now, I haven't showered since Sunday morning. I intended to get clean this morning, but instead I snoozed my alarm three times, and then there was only time for a quick bite to eat before I left for my 8 AM Hebrew ulpan class. I do plan on grabbing a shower this afternoon before "Terrorism and Responses."

Mondays and Tuesdays are just really long for me. Yesterday I had seven hours of classes, another 3 hours of homework and somewhere in between I found time for two other activit ies: First of all, my volunteer program 'began' last night. I will be tutoring young Ethiopian olim in English. We were supposed to go to meet the kids last night. We drove to Kiryat Chaim (a low income suburb of Haifa) to a community center where we were meeting them. We got about 5 minutes of face time before they all left, and then we had 2 hours to sit around and do nothing before the bus came back to pick us all up. What an absolute waste of time. I'm usually pretty comfortable with minimal levels of organization, but this was total disorganization.

As frustrating as that was, I had the opportunity to do something fun that I never EVER considered doing in Israel. An Israeli friend of mine is a baseball fan, and he borrowed 2 gloves and a baseball from his younger brother. We played catch! Just like in the front yard with my dad, or back in Champaign on the quad. Such a merging of two of my greatest passions (baseball and Israel) I had never thought possible.

Rina is loading us with more Arabic homework than I can believe. I'm picking it up quickly, which is good, but I also need time for my other classes and a little time to relax during the week. We had 2 hours last night, and she gave us about 3 for an encore tonight. My sourpuss countenance didn't last long though. The student union was handing out cotton candy on the main pedestrian walkway between the dorms and the school buildings! I was thoroughly enjoying this childhood pleasure when one of the Israelis told me what cotton candy is called in Hebrew: grandmother's hair (שערות סבתה.) It's a revolting image, and the cotton candy became immediately became less appealing. This gave me an idea.

What if the solution to America's weight problem is giving horrible names to otherwise alluring junk food? Could this work? Would people really be less inclined to eat something that they know tastes good if it had a vile name? Of course being the amateur scientist that I am, I needed to test this hypothesis. We're going to go with something that is universally believed to have no health benefits whatsoever: soda-pop. People argue about whether to call it 'soda' or 'pop' but I'm dispensing with both of these terms. From now on, the only phrase you'll see in this space is "roadkill juice."

Who wants a cold bottle of roadkill juice?!

Here's what I need from you: Tell me if this is having any effect at all. For my college-age readers: do you find yourselves more likely to take the vodka straight instead of mixing it with roadkill juice? For my fellow KS members: are there fewer roadkill juice rewards caps available for me at the end of a kiddush lunch? Don't tell me now. Assess after a few months of random reinforcement from this page.

I want to close today's entry on a serious note. Today is an international solidarity day for Israel's 3 kidnapped soldiers: Gilad Shalit, being held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev who are being held by Hizbollah, captured in the cross border attack that provoked the Second Lebanon War. Whether you are participating in an organized program or not, please take a few moments today to think of them, or pray for them if you are inclined to do so, that we will not forget them. Hopefully soon they will come home.

Sunday Study Sunday

Today was a homework day for me so nothing terribly exciting happened. We have a group project for "Terrorism and Responses" in which we need to prepare a security briefing on a non-Middle East terrorist organization, including a 5-7 page paper and a 20 minute class presentation. My group is presenting on the LTTE (Tamil Tigers.) I did 3 hours of research on the Tigers to learn that they are not really nice guys.

Finished up my Arabic this evening with Doris. Our teacher is gonna load us up with work this semester, but it's fine with me. I'll learn Arabic much more quickly with extra repetitions, and working with a partner has kept me honest and motivated. Now I'm watching football (the American variety) with a couple other guys in the moadon. It's become somewhat of a Sunday night ritual for us. Unfortunately, we only get one game per week, and the Bears haven't been the featured game yet.

Menachem's Birthday

Today is Menachem's 61st birthday and we spent all day celebrating. I went to Menachem and Devorah's house this morning and waited there until Amir joined us. We all piled in the car and drove about 20 minutes to a Brazilian style steak house. There we met my cousin Carmit, her husband Shani and their two kids Shachar and Shai.

Amir and Shachar.

This is the first time I've had red meat since I arrived in Israel nearly three weeks ago, and I definitely made up for lost time. Amir ordered a dish for us to share: An entire kilo of meat. Beef, lamb and chicken. Steak on a sword. Delicious but serious overkill. This lunch brought me back to my "Basar Tuesday" days in Champaign. If you want to be grossed out, the old url is still online for some reason: http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~kagin/basar_tuesday/

Menachem and I at lunch.

Shai is absolutely beautiful. She is six months old now. I missed meeting her by a week when I was here in March. Hopefully I will get to know her pretty well. Carmit already asked me about babysitting. I spent most of the post lunch chat time playing with her. She is a very active baby with a really strong grip, and she loves to laugh. Just love her!

Meet Shai!

After lunch Carmit and her family loaded the car and headed for home. We came back to Menachem's for a while to rest. I had the chance to call home and my parents got to wish Menachem a happy birthday. At 4:30 we rolled out for Netanya; I was on my way to seeing my first Israeli soccer game.

The family at lunch. Carmit is holding Shai with her brother Amir next to her. Devorah is sitting on the right and Menachem is partially blocked by me.

Menachem is a big Maccabi Haifa fan. He has been going to games since he was 16 years old. Of course it doesn't hurt that Haifa has a history of success that is both lengthy and recent. They won 3 consecutive Premier League championships as recently as 2006. Unfortunately, Haifa is not the powerhouse it has been in the past (they lost 4 players to free agency during the offseason), and they lost to Maccabi Netanya 2-1.

This is Menachem BEFORE the game. You can imagine how pleased he looked afterwards.

The Netanya soccer stadium is a dump. Apparently they call it "the box in Netanya." It actually reminded me a lot of Wrigley Field, but without the charm. It was old, small and crumbling. The bathroom (there was only 1) was filthy and poorly lit, and the pitch looked like the outfield grass after a Sting concert. Plus there is a short bleacher section on one side of the pitch and balls kept being kicked onto the street. Reminds me very much of balls flying onto Waveland on a hot summer day.

The Netanya colors are yellow and black. I have always felt this is the worst color combination in sports. Who wants to look like a bunch of bumblebees?

Of course if the stadium is a Roman era relic, the atmosphere in the stands was pure college football. I say this with the utmost reverence: these fans are fucking insane. They stood the entire game, singing and chanting, waving their M. Haifa scarves and screaming at the top of their lungs. The chants were very creative, and generally so dirty that they made me blush. I won't print them here in English, but as a bonus for those of you who read and understand Hebrew, I offer this little gem:
!נתניה זונה! נתניה זונה! נתניה מוצצת את כל השכונה

Haifa fans react to a first half goal.

The ride back home was somber for a few minutes and then loosened up. We stopped at a strip mall where one of Amir's restaurants is located so he could pop in a check up on business, and got ice cream afterwards. What a day! I finally got back to the dorms around 11:30. There is a home game next weekend against Beitar Jerusalem that I will most likely be going to with Per and maybe some other people. It was so much fun, I can already feel myself being drawn in. I want to close by once more wishing Menachem a happy 61st birthday, until one hundred and twenty. Today was his birthday, but I had such a great time it sure felt like mine.

The Haifa faithful performing one of their cheers.

One more gratuitous shot of Shachar and Shai, just because.

My First Israeli Salad

You'll have to forgive me but this post will be mostly about food. I'm starting to get my swagger back in the kitchen as I learn how to shop in Israel and how to use the instruments I have to make the dishes I want. Here is my first salad in Israel, and it turned out very nicely. I went to the Hadar shuk this morning to buy produce for the week, in what I plan to make a weekly affair. The fruits and vegetables are so much fresher and less expensive than in the supermarkets that if you have the time to go to the shuk, it's a no brainer.

Last night I had a couple of people over and we made chicken in a pot. Its exactly what it sounds like. Take fresh chicken, some vegetables, herbs and oil, and put it all in a pot. It's so easy we were able to chill outside on the porch and talk while dinner cooked. We ended up going out for drinks afterwards. I'm still hoping that eventually I will have an oven and a microwave to work with, but for now I'm getting comfortable with what I do have.

My Friend Cho and I waiting for a bus back from Hadar.

Apparently there will be a dorm Shabbat dinner every week, which is excellent. It was a much smaller turnout than we had during the international students weekend. I imagine this is what it will be like most weeks. I was definitely overdressed. I showed up wearing a blue knit dress shirt and khakis. Everyone else was wearing whatever they had put on in the morning when they left the house. Plus I was the only guy in the whole joint wearing a kippah. What is very interesting is that a lot of the people who came are not Jewish, including a number of my international school colleagues, and also a handful of Arabs. Sometimes Judaism in Israel is very strange to me. Shabbat shalom.

Countries represented include: South Korea, Lithuania, Argentina, United States, Switzerland, Germany, and Azerbaijan.

Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Day

Today we commemorated the 12th anniversary of the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a religious extremist. There was a ceremony on campus that drew about 500 people. As it was all in Hebrew, I got the essence of the speeches if not every word, but what really moved me was a performance of the song "שלום, חבר" which was written by Shalom Hanoch.


The representative from the student union talked about how everyone in the audience remembered where they were when they heard that Rabin had been murdered, and actually I do. I was in our basement and turned on the television and one the news jockeys (Peter Jennings?) announced Rabin's assassination. I was only 11 years old at the time, and this made a big impact on me. Most people don't know, though I'm sure that my parents remember that I wrote a silly song about Rabin when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. Of course Oslo was not the redemption it promised to be, but at 11 years old, Rabin's murder signaled the end of a child's dream for peace.

On a more cheerful note, another person is now living in my apartment. Hamzan has not moved in yet but I saw him again today. The new roommate is also Arab so I'm beginning to wonder if mine will be an otherwise all Arab apartment. My dad joked to me earlier that I would be the "token Jew." Seriously though, is it irony that I come to Israel and for the first time in my life have non-Jewish roommates? Who knows. Anyway, I haven't talked to the new roommate much yet but I think that he may be shy. Soon I suppose.

I have met a few more Israelis. I played a few games of basketball last night with Israelis. Not that I didn't already know this, but the Camp Ramah "camp Hebrew" that we use is total bullshit. To whit; the Israelis were yelling "foul" and "shoot." Of course at Ramah it would have been some nonsensical, ridiculous Hebraism that is completely removed from reality. This demonstrates two things: The first, as I said, is that camp Hebrew is bullshit. The second is that Modern Hebrew is really English repackaged with a handful of extra sounds that make Americans spit when they talk. Oh yeah, and I sprained my toe playing. I can walk on it, but I don't think I will be doing any running this weekend.

Chutzpa

It's what Israelis do best. Allow me to set the stage. I went to the supermarket with Menachem last night. At Israeli supermarkets, you need to put down a deposit for your shopping cart. The carts are locked together. To unlock one, you insert a five shekel coin, and when you are finished, you lock the cart to the wall again and your money comes back out. It's a nice system, it keeps carts from piling up in the middle of the parking lot like at American supermarkets. Menachem was returning his cart in the basement of the mall when a woman approached him and asked if she could lock his cart to her's. The wall attachment was broken so she couldn't get her money back; instead she wanted to take Menachem's money and stiff him with the same problem! Needless to say, he told her to take a hike.

I spent about two hours at their house in Ramat Eshkol last night. We watched some Israeli television, which still seems funny to me. There was a cooking show on that was the same as any number of cooking shows in the states, but the show is called קרב סכינים, literally "battle of the knives." I love it! Devorah and I chatted for a while and ate, and she helped me to outfit my kitchen some more with a pot (which until yesterday I still didn't have) and some food and silverware. It is really nice to have family here.

I spoke with one of my roommates-to-be this afternoon over lunch. His name is Hamzan and he is Arab. This will be good for me I think. We chatted (all in Hebrew) for a while and he looked over my Arabic homework and chuckled. Apparently it isn't on a very high level. I don't know how his English is. We've spoken twice now, but never a word in English. Whether we are using Hebrew out of convention or necessity, this should do wonders for my ability to speak and understand. The university strike is still going on, so he went home and won't be here to stay until classes start. I would think that people would want to get out of the house and come to college, especially if they don't have to worry about classes. Apparently not though, considering that there are still 4 empty bedrooms in my apartment.

The Ramon Crater

Or more accurately, מכתש רמון. I'm back from tiyul in the Negev. I will spare you the geological definition of a machtesh, but if you are interested here is wikipedia's entry on the Ramon Crater: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Crater. One thing that should be noted is that it is not a crater, but rather a huge depression caused by millions of years of erosion and plate tectonics.


We left Haifa at 6 AM, but the trip didn't really begin until a breakfast stop in Be'er Sheva. We walked into an open air market, bought hummus and lafa bread and sat down on the side of the road to eat. There wasn't much remarkable about the stop. We did see Ben Gurion University and the Soroka hospital from the bus, but otherwise there was very little to see. I did get into an argument with a Druze guy in the market, who wanted to know how much it would cost to buy Lina (second from the left, above.)


Once we had left any semblance of civilization behind, we stopped at the Ovdat archaeological site, about 40 minutes south of Sde Boker. The site is the ruins of an ancient Nabatean city in the middle of the desert. The Nabateans were a Roman - era people who made their livings by carting Indian spices across the Arabian Peninsula, through Petra and then crossing the Negev to the port of Gaza, where they sold the goods to waiting Roman and Greek patrons. This became known as the "Spice Route." What keyed their success was their ability to survive the trek across the desert. They accomplished this through shrewd water conservation and collection, and desert cities and camps like Ovdat.


We did a relatively short 2 and a half hour hike that afternoon, going down into the crater and walking to our campsite at a Beduin tent. From there we spent the next 3 hours cooking our dinner, eating, and then talking around the campfire. As hot as it gets in the desert during the day, it gets very cold at night, so the fire was extremely welcome. That night it was very difficult to sleep because an Israeli family was staying in the tent as well, and they were miserably loud and obnoxious all night. Needless to say the dinner and conversation was more memorable than sleeping in the tent.


Yesterday we left for the long hike: 9 hours through the desert. Here is the basic route we took; Leaving camp, we walked up a winding pass through one of the mountains in the machtesh. Once we reached the top, we followed the path along a ridge of the mountain for a while, before turning back down into one of the wadi's (a dry riverbed.) We walked through the wadi until we reached the point at which several of the wadi's come together and then followed another. The hike ended with another trek up the highest mountain inside the machtesh, where we got the most spectacular view of all of the surrounding area. Not that my photos do justice to the incredible natural beauty of the desert, but I'll close this post with a selection of other photos that are fairly representative of the hike.

The first real difficult part of the hike. This was about a 45 degree grade.

Part of the group looking out over the ridge into the machtesh.

We stopped to rest by more Nabattean ruins.

My friend Per and I at the Nabattean ruins.

Walking through a wadi. Some vegetation grows here because of the annual floods.

Napping in the shade after lunch. We rested here for about an hour.

The face of the cliff. You can see the different strata of rock from different periods in the creation of the machtesh.

Exploring a cave with some guys from the Habo U.

On the road to nowhere.

Victory!